Inheritance
by Lynn Jones
Summary: A little girl at a party in her uncle's honor is about to take the first step in discovering what she has inherited from her parents.


**Disclaimer: Tania and Rimiko are mine. But thats all. **

The little girl frowned as she scanned the room for her parents. Where had they gone? They'd left her with her uncle, and while she adored him, she didn't like the people who kept coming up to talk to him. She tugged at his hand, impatient for him to stop talking to these people who so often paused to coo at her like she was a baby. All because she was small for her age and didn't talk.

They didn't know that she refused to talk to them simply because she knew that if they knew who she was, they wouldn't treat her so nicely. Her grip on his hand tightened.

"Rimi-chan, are you all right?" Her uncle asked, waving away the latest person and crouching beside her. The girl nodded, her caramel eyes and brown hair so much like his. She sometimes wondered why she had the same hair color as her uncle and mother, but not her father. "Do you want to find your parents?" Again, the girl nodded. Her uncle smiled -a little smile that he only showed to his family- and picked her up.

The girl clung to him as he made his way through the crowd to a door leading outside. Just beyond that door stood her parents, her mother resting a hand on her father's arm and speaking in low, soothing tones.

"Daddy mad?" the girl asked sympathetically. She knew that her father often had to take breaks from things like this. Big groups of people irritated her father, and even though her mother was always telling him how much better he was doing, she knew that when her mother wasn't around, her father was always on edge and not nearly as good at keeping his temper with people who weren't her or her uncle. "Throw mean person?" Her father chuckled and reached out to take her from her uncle, and she went happily, reaching up to pat his blond hair as he settled her in his arms.

"No, Rimi-chan. Daddy didn't throw any people," he assured her. She tilted her head. On one hand, she knew it made her father upset when he got mad and threw people. On the other hand, she loved watching the mean people fly, and thought it might be fun to soar. She didn't know personally if it was fun to be thrown though; her father never got mad at her, and never threw her. He also never threw things at her, which made her happy. She didn't think it would be fun to have a sign coming her way.

"Was she getting upset?" Her mother asked her uncle.

"More like nervous. She wanted to come see you," he answered, his voice quiet and even. The girl pouted as her father focused on what his brother was saying. She adored her father even more than she adored her uncle. It wasn't fair that her uncle got her father's attention while he was holding her.

To say that the girl was a little spoiled by her father was an understatement. He doted on her constantly. Whenever he had time, her father was eager to play a game or take her to the park near their home.

"Rimi-chan, would you like cake?" her father asked. The little girl beamed and nodded eagerly; she had inherited her father's love of sweets. "Ani, I'm taking Rimiko to get some cake," he told the girl's mother, who smiled.

"I'll come with you. Kasuka?" her mother asked. Her uncle shook his head.

"It's about time for all the speeches. I'll see you three later," he answered levelly.

"All right," her father grunted, attention on his daughter and the way to the table with the cake. Her mother shook her head at the girl and her father, then followed them to the cake.

The girl wondered why her father had been mad, but cake was more important. After all, Shizuo Heiwajima still got angry fairly often, and Tania Heiwajima, his wife, often took him off to the side to calm him down. Their daughter, Rimiko, knew this, so it was normal to her.

What wasn't normal, however, was what happened next, although she didn't know it at the time.

Her father had handed her a fork and was now occupied with getting the cake, but Rimiko was watching her uncle make his way across the room. She watched as someone tripped and fell into Kasuka, knocking him down. She scowled, her tiny face scrunching up as she clenched the fork in her hand so hard that the handle was dented as she threw it at the person who had knocked her uncle down, hitting him in the arm and making him yelp.

There was a commotion, but by the time anyone thought to check who might have been near the cake forks, Rimiko Heiwajima and her parents were seated across the room, eating their cake.


End file.
